With current advancements in technology, many types of processes can now be automated. Automated systems are becoming increasingly pervasive in a variety of business enterprises. One area of automation can be found in the manufacturing industry. For example, manufacturing enterprises are enhancing their operations by installing automated machinery for producing finished goods as well as unfinished goods such as subassemblies.
Business enterprises, however, are often faced with significant challenges when it comes to maintaining their automated equipment and minimizing downtime. Operational issues should be identified and addressed in an efficient and timely manner. Many factors contribute to loss of production of the enterprise on a daily basis. Factors may include machine breakdowns, tardy personnel, slow working machinery and personnel, process rejects, automated stations working beyond their expected cycle time, and blocking and starving production lines.
Identifying issues and tracking their progress is not an easy task. In some cases, the necessary information may simply not be available from the system equipment, such as in the case of outdated manufacturing systems. In the case of newer systems, the information may be available, however, due to its sheer volume, may be difficult to interpret, filter, or prioritize.
Automated collection systems have been developed to capture issues of the business enterprise. Collection systems capture and store data pertaining to operations of the enterprise, faults that occur for each operation, a number of incidences per loss event, and a corresponding loss event for the number of incidences. For large enterprises, the data in raw form can be overwhelming. Without a method of organizing, prioritizing, and tracking the data, a business enterprise may not be able to improve the efficiency of the business. Further a business enterprise may not be able to improve the uptime performance of the enterprise.